For pinball wizards, Ogden Avenue beckons

Galloping Ghost unveils new arcade dedicated to rare, classic games

Tuesday, March 5th, 2019 12:41 PM

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Pinball devotees and gaming enthusiasts packed the new Galloping Ghost Pinball Arcade, which opened on Ogden Avenue on March 2 to takes their turns on rare machines dating from the 1970s to the present. | Alexa Rogals/Staff Photographer

Among the rare, horror movie-themed games available to play at Galloping Ghost Pinball Arcade are (from left) Freddy: A Nightmare on Elm Street, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Godzilla, Alien and - one of the rarest of all - the prototype for Predator. | Alexa Rogals/Staff Photographer

Patrons play the new pinball games available on March 2, during the opening night of Galloping Ghost's Pinball Arcade on Ogden Avenue in Brookfield. | ALEXA ROGALS/Staff Photographer

Sara Stack, of La Grange, plays the Twilight Zone pinball game on March 2, during the opening night of Galloping Ghost's Pinball Arcade on Ogden Avenue in Brookfield. | ALEXA ROGALS/Staff Photographer

An antique Caveman pinball game is seen on March 2, during the opening night of Galloping Ghost's Pinball Arcade on Ogden Avenue in Brookfield. | ALEXA ROGALS/Staff Photographer

Guests play the new pinball games, from left, Predator, Alien and Godzilla on March 2, during the opening night of Galloping Ghost's Pinball Arcade on Ogden Avenue in Brookfield. | ALEXA ROGALS/Staff Photographer

Riana Johnson, left, of Westmont, and John Kralis, of Darien, play Monster Bash on March 2, during the opening night of Galloping Ghost's Pinball Arcade on Ogden Avenue in Brookfield. | ALEXA ROGALS/Staff Photographer

Attendees play pinball on March 2, during the opening night of Galloping Ghost's Pinball Arcade on Ogden Avenue in Brookfield. | ALEXA ROGALS/Staff Photographer

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Get your oil change with a side of arcade games

Doc Mack's business empire on Ogden Avenue in Brookfield includes no less than six different entities. In addition to the Galloping Ghost video arcade, pinball arcade and martial arts gym, Mack operates a separate videogame production studio and a reproduction company that produces printed graphics for Galloping Ghost's videogame consoles and for other clients.

And earlier this year, he and another employee formed a partnership to buy and operate an auto shop – called Galloping Ghost Garage, naturally – at 9428 Ogden Ave., kitty corner from Galloping Ghost Arcade.

According to Mack, many of his employees own sports cars and motorcycles and wanted a place they could soup up their vehicles and still be close to where the work was happening.

Mack revealed that he purchased the business from Joe Pomazal, who still works at the shop as the master technician, on Jan. 1. While the signage still says Joe's Garage, it's been operating as Galloping Ghost Garage since then.

"He loved doing the work, [but] he wanted to take a step away from the stresses of owning a business," Mack said. "It all lined up."

Mack's partner in the business is Will Searle, who has been working as a Galloping Ghost Productions programmer for about four years. Searle still does programming from an office in the garage in between auto service jobs.

According to Mack, he's working on potential crossover opportunities between the garage and the arcade.

"If you're going to get your oil changed, you can go the arcade instead of just sitting there on your phone," said Mack. "You can go down to the gym if you want while you're getting your oil changed."

Although Doc Mack made his name in Brookfield as the owner of the world's largest video game arcade, Galloping Ghost Arcade, pinball machines were a tiny presence at the now 700-plus machine gaming emporium.

But any pinball enthusiast who may have felt slighted by their absence at Galloping Ghost's mothership can get their fix over at Mack's newest venture, Galloping Ghost Pinball inside a former insurance office at 9213 Ogden Ave.

The new arcade – sandwiched between the Galloping Ghost GAMA martial arts gym to the east and Galloping Ghost Productions Inc. to the west – opened March 1 with 31 machines dating from as far back as the 1970s right up to the present day.

In time, Mack said he expects the pinball arcade to expand into office space in the rear of the building, offering space for a total of about 50 machines.

"I don't know pinball as well as I do the videogame side, but we definitely want to have a lot of the rare games and the most well-known games as well," said Mack.

Pinball had such a small presence at the video arcade, Mack said, because the machines require a lot of maintenance. But when he finally decided to take them out completely, he got some pushback.

"The reason for even doing [the pinball arcade] was it was the thing people asked for the most," Mack said. "The more we put out crazy, rare [video] games, it was 'we want pinball.'"

So Mack sought out pinball dealer Troy Smith to help locate rare machines.

"The stuff he started finding for us was just outrageous," Mack said.

The pinball machines in the main room skew toward 1990s-era horror-movie and science fiction titles, like Creature from the Black Lagoon, Tales from the Crypt, Twilight Zone and Nightmare on Elm Street.

A smaller room to the west houses older games, like Fireball from 1977 and machines named after hugely popular early video arcade games like Defender and Q-Bert's Quest.

But what devotees will no doubt gravitate toward are one-of-a-kind unicorns like Varkon, a pinball game designed to look like an arcade game, with flippers operated by joy sticks and a mirror reflecting a recessed playing surface that serves as a "screen."

Once Troy Smith located Alien, another movie-themed rarity, Mack said he decided to go for seriously rare games.

"They did not make many of them and it, for collectors, is just like ridiculous," Mack said of Alien. "This was going to be our big showpiece, and then once we got this other games just started popping up."

Like the game Predator – a one-off game based on the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger film that is possibly the most controversial pinball machine ever produced.

The game's creators built the machine but failed to obtain licensing from the owners of the Predator, killing the project in its tracks. Lawsuits ensued by people who had posted cash for pre-orders of the promised machines, which never materialized.

Mack said Predator is easily the most expensive machine he's ever purchased. On average the machines cost $5,000 to $6,000, he said. Arcade games pale in comparison at a few hundred dollars each.

But the point is not to pay lots of money for a collector's item and have it gather dust, but to allow the game to be enjoyed by pinball enthusiasts.

"Any other collector, it would stay in a collection and nobody would get to play it, and it would just kind of be gone. Nobody would ever see it again," Mack said. "One of the reasons people have been so interested in us doing pinball is that there's so many games that people only dream of playing."

Galloping Ghost Pinball is open seven days a week from 3 to 11 p.m. and it will cost $15 to play all day. If you want to piggyback a trip to the video arcade down the street at 9415 Ogden Ave., it will cost you $30 for the day.

Mack said the hours of the pinball arcade will expand once all of the staffing is in place. In the meantime, he's been honing his pinball skills.

"There's so much depth to pinball," Mack said. "People think it's all just luck and I've seen pro pinball players that can play all day. They know the feel of the machine. They'll make every shot."

They have like 6 businesses on odgen now.. But they still have only 3 parking places for the worlds largest arcade. The village fought lawsuits to ensure resident parking in hollywood.. But us southsiders constantly lose out... I should NOT have to park a block away from my house. This will be the number 1 reason I leave Brookfield.. signed .. looking for a real estate agent.